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Wednesday, April 30, 2014

On Divine Mercy Sunday, April 27, 2014, I had to do
something I never imagined I’d have to do: kick beggars off of church property.

A Hispanic woman and her two children were standing at the
exit of our parking lot on the driveway median, mooching from the parishioners
as they were driving out. Our pastor, Fr. George, is a lovely man, very good-humored
and self-effacing. But you don’t want to be within fifty feet of him when he
needs to delegate something, because he’s likely to grab the first unwitting
soul available. He was discussing the issue with Bret, the Grand Knight of our
Knights of Columbus council, when I stepped out of the church and went over to
greet them.

“Ah, hello, Tony!” Fr. George exclaimed. As he reached out
to give me a perfunctory handshake, he continued to speak to Bret: “Here we
are, then; Tony can do this!” Herding me away from Bret and the building, he
pointed out the beggars to me. “Go over there and tell them they cannot stand
there; it’s illegal and dangerous. Make sure they leave.”

Moving the family on was fairly simple: I simply put my most
pleasant face on and requested that they leave. And as I was walking back, one
of the children, who unseen by me before had gone up to the church and was now
walking back to the family, asked me, “Sir, do you think we’d be able to talk
to someone at the church tomorrow at nine o’clock?” Yes, I agreed, someone
should certainly be there.

Nevertheless, the irony of bustling poor people away from
Christ’s church rather than bringing them in was too obvious. I can hear Jesus
say, “I was hungry, and you gave me the bum’s rush” (cf. Matthew 25:42).

Monday, April 14, 2014

New Atheists have a tendency to ask questions about
Scripture and Christian belief they intend to be purely rhetorical but which
reveal defects in their knowledge and assumptions. Case in point: Mira Sorvino’s
set of “rhetorical” questions about the
lack of a passage in the Bible stating positively the evil of slavery.

Precisely because the questions are intended to be
rhetorical, the New Atheist isn’t looking for an answer — it’s supposed to be a
slam-dunk “gotcha”, and anything you say is mere thimble-rigging, a pathetic
attempt to rationalize an obvious error. Moreover, the proper response requires
something of a full history lesson, for which many people have no patience …
especially if it challenges cherished myths about ante-Internet European
history.

That the
Bible was never intended to be treated as the sole infallible source of
Christian beliefs is not a sufficient answer in itself. To understand where
the defect lies, first ask yourself this question: How, after thousands of
years in which the propriety and naturalness of slavery was taken for granted,
did the West come to believe it wrong? I’ll give you a couple of clues: 1) It
had nothing to do with the rise of the scientific method; 2) it also had
nothing to do with the Renaissance and the so-called “Enlightenment”.

It’s very tough for Americans to remember that we were
almost the last of the modern First World countries to abandon slavery, and
then only as a byproduct of a horrific struggle that decimated a generation of
young men. It’s tougher to remember that people convicted of felonies can still
be forced to work by the state, as a stated exception in the Thirteenth
Amendment, or that international treaties still conditionally allow forced
labor by prisoners of war. But only history wonks like me know that, from about
1100 until 1492, slavery as we understand it was all but dead in Christian Europe,
hanging on mostly in the borderlands between the Christian and Moslem worlds.

You seem to be an adherent to the Novus Ordo sectarian community. That is bad news. That means you are pro-abortion and a supporter of the engagers of the Sin of Sodom. …

One must say that you are obstinate. You are familiar with the sedevacante position [Indeed I am, especially with its similarity in flaws to Protestantism]. You have a familiarity concerning the heresies of the post-Vatican II claimants to the papacy. Baptism is absolutely necessary for salvation: the heretics you promote reject this Dogma. …

If you’re at all familiar with my writings of the last five years plus, the statement that I am “pro-abortion and a supporter of the engagers of the Sin of Sodom” must have had you howling with either rage or laughter. The bit about baptism is a bit trickier; let me just content myself for
now with saying that this is willful misinterpretation of Pope Francis’ words on the part of Ms. Lexy.[1]

When I denied her charge and told her she’d committed the sin of rash judgment, she doubled down on it: “Your false religion recognizes pro-abortion politicians as having a good standing. Your false religion celebrates the sodomites since you have sodomite ‘masses.’ You are therefore pro-sodomite and pro-abortion since you are in communion with this evil and all such persons. You are an apostate.﻿”

Not even Bernardo Gui — the real Bernardo Gui, not the cardboard-cutout antagonist of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose — would have brought me to trial under such specious reasoning. In any event, since the inquisition is defunct and has been for a very long time (even in Spain), I’m not worried about an auto-da-fé just yet.

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This site is not an official organ of the Holy Catholic Church.The opinions expressed on this blog are solely those of the author, and are not to be construed to express the opinions of the Holy See or the Dioceses of Fort Worth and Dallas. Doctrinal discussions should be considered authoritative only so far as the relevant official documents of the Catholic Church are quoted; any errors of interpretation or explanation are the author's alone, and I would appreciate correction.

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